Yes We (Still) Can: Politics in the Age of Obama, Twitter, and Trump

by Dan Pfeiffer

“Mr. President…you’ve talked a lot about how we’re all trying to get our paragraph right in history. What do you hope that paragraph says about you?” The president replied, “When I think about what will most gratify me, it will be if, twenty years from now, I can look back and I can say, wow, look at all these people who first got involved—maybe even when they were too young to vote—in government, politics, issues, nonprofits, public service, and that wave just kind of—a cleansing wave washes over the country. And if that happens, then the details of how we dealt with climate change, or whether the individual responsibility mandate on the Affordable Care Act was the right approach or not—that becomes less important. Because if we’re getting the broad direction right, this is a pretty ingenious country, full of ingenious people, and we’ll figure it out. And that’s what I want—is I want everybody to feel like we can figure this out if we just don’t waste a lot of time doing dumb stuff.” The idea of Trump and his coterie of Internet trolls, self-dealing Wall Street tycoons, and unrepentant racists wandering the halls of the White House doing dumb, mean shit is hard to stomach. Not a day has gone by since the 2016 election when I haven’t been angry about the result and sad for the country. My hope in writing this book is to show that it doesn’t have to be this way. That if we learn the right lessons and, most important, people—especially young people—get involved in politics, ...